When Sam Bayazid opened Headzup Barbershop, he sought to create a chic atmosphere for hair cutting. His vision included all the barbershop staples: great music, a classic American design scheme, and, of course, a 1925 Bugatti Type 37 placed just inside the shop. Besides Sam and his team of barbers, the Bugatti is Headzup’s centerpiece. But this car is more than just an aesthetic piece to Sam, for more than a year, it represented his dream of business ownership.
He may be the shop owner now, but that was not always the case. When Sam first came to America, he got a job cutting hair at a shop in Anaheim. He was 18 years old, still learning English, and building his clientele from the ground up. Fortunately, his barbering prowess made accumulating regular customers a breeze. One such customer, a regular for most of Sam’s 3 years at that shop, asked him about his plans. “He asked if I was interested in running my own shop someday, and I told him I was literally looking for a place to do that right then. That’s when he brought up the car,” Sam said. The car, a Bugatti Type 37, had been an item the man had been looking to sell for a little while, and when he heard about it, Sam immediately had an idea for his future. “I thought it could be like my signature, you know? A part of my shop that was uniquely mine,” Sam said.
Sam decided to buy the car and put it in his shop; the seller even slashed off half the price because he believed in Sam’s vision. Sam had his barbering skills and his centerpiece; the only thing left was finding where to put his shop. He was checking real estate listings constantly, and just as he started to make some progress, the entire world shut down in March of 2020. COVID struck at the worst possible time for Sam, but he did not let that stop him. He began making haircutting house calls and got storage space for the car while searching for where his shop would be. He had had the car for just over a year, and it helped him focus on his goals. “I would just go and look at it almost every day. Of course, it’s a beautiful car, but to me, it was so much more. This car was my shop, my brand, my identity. It represented everything I wanted,” Sam said. After more than half a year of house calls, Sam found the perfect venue in Orange and opened Headzup. The Bugatti moved from a storage garage to center stage in the shop, and Sam has been working for himself ever since. Looking ahead, Sam wants vintage sports cars to be synonymous with Headzup, planning to put one in every shop he opens. As Sam puts it, “The shop wouldn’t be what it is without the car, it’s all my hard work, it’s my dream, and now it’s my brand.”
